April 19, 2007

There is no shortage of books written to explain the success of companies. In Search of Excellence and Good to Great are the best known for using this technique. There are not many books that do the opposite—look at why companies failed.

It is worth spending some time on the topic of failure. There are many more companies that fail than succeed. I am sure you have heard the comparison of the companies that were on the Dow Jones Industrials list in 1920 and the fact that General Electric is the only one that remains.

There is one possible constraint to think about. Phil Rosenwieg points out in The Halo Effect, it is hard to distinguish between success and what actually caused the success. There may be similar problems distinguishing failure and its causes. Let's just keep that in mind as we look at a few books that examine the difficulty of keeping businesses going.

This is going to be a series that will run over the next couple of weeks.

Carol Hymowitz over at the WSJ shared her list of business books for holiday reading (you may need to log in). On it, were these books:
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.
This is what we've all been talking about in the past few years and even more so since the rise of Wikipedia.

This has potential to start a bit of dialogue. There's a recently published book out there refuting some of the big business books such as Good to Great and In Search of Excellence.
Phil argues that he has.

Steven Levitt on his Freakonomics blog takes a shot at Good To Great and the recent performance of GTG standouts Fannie Mae, Circuit City, and Wells Fargo. A purchase of either Fannie Mae or Circuit City at the time of the book's publication would have netted you an 80% loss in your investment today. Not so good.

A growing wave of critics is taking shots at Jim Collins and his book, Good to Great, questioning the research and Collins' oft-followed path for corporate success. The arguments against Collins are nicely summarized in a Boston Globe article written by Drake Bennett titled "Luck Inc. " Jim Collins is quoted, pushing back on some of the counterclaims to his contribution to "business-success literature.

Channel Insider recently posted a slide show of 21 Must Read Books for Business Success. It was compiled by asking "successful solution providers what books have both inspired them and shaped their approach to making their businesses a success. " You can get detailed descriptions of the books by viewing the slide show, but the list itself, with links, below.